Virginia Woolf and “The Hours”

In our presentation Maria and I, Louise, are going to explore how modernism is portrayed in literature and film, through the writer Virginia Woolf’s work.

The plot of the 2002 movie “The Hours” is based on the 1998 novel “The Hours” by Michael Cunningham. The movie stars: Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf, Julianne Moore as Laura Brown, and Meryl Streep as Clarissa Vaughn. Taking a page from Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway”, “The Hours” looks at one day in each of the three women’s lives: the day that Virginia Woolf starts writing “Mrs. Dalloway” and later kills herself; the day that Laura bakes a cake for her husband’s birthday and considers overdosing on sleeping pills and tranquilizers; the day that Clarissa picks up her flowers for the party, only to have the party cancelled to mourn Richard’s suicide. Each of these woman’s lives are connected by the book “Mrs. Dalloway” and their struggle to find meaning in their lives.

“Someone has to die in order that the rest of us should value life more. It's contrast”. This is the quote that Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf says in the movie “The Hours.” The reactions to death, the struggle to find purpose in one’s life, and the struggle to understand the ending of another’s life seems to be the main theme that “Mrs. Dalloway”, the book “The Hours”, and the movie “The Hours” are dealing with. It is the inevitable event of death, and the questioning of life that connects all people together.

The questioning of life and death became an escape for Woolf, as she was considered insane to even consider what the ending of her life would be like. Her character Mrs. Dalloway struggles with the stifling atmosphere of her life: she lives in a nice house, has a rich husband, but at what price? Mrs. Dalloway’s parties are her only way to show her creativity, but she plays a sacrificial role in catering to the indulgences of others; she considers her thoughts naïve and not worth any notice. Woolf’s own restlessness about her life can be seen in the regrets and resignations of Clarissa Dalloway.

For another opinion on the way that Michael Cunningham’s “The Hours” uses a similar writing style and conventions to Virginia Woolf’s, please check out this website: http://lisa.revues.org/2912 .

We couldn’t find any good clips to attach from youtube.com of the movie “The Hours”, but please do watch it on your own time! It is an awesome movie; very artistic, with beautiful music, and poignant speeches. And very powerful in the fact that; when you watch it you keep waiting for something to happen, without realizing that it is happening, life is happening for these women.

We hope you continue to read Virginia Woolf’s work, and look into “The Hours”.

Sources Used

Pillière, Linda “Michael Cunningham’s The Hours : echoes of Virginia Woolf”, Revue LISA/LISA e-journal [Online] , Vol. II - n°5 | 2004 , Online since 02 November 2009, connection on 27 March 2011. URL : http://lisa.revues.org/2912

The Hours. Dir. Stephen Daldry. Perf. Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, Nicole Kidman, and Ed Harris. Paramount, 2002. Film

Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. 1925. Orlando, Florida: Harcourt, Inc, 2005. Print

Woolf, Virginia. The Broadview Anthology of British Literature Concise Edition Vol. B. Ed. Don LePan. Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2008.

Images are from google search of ‘Virginia Woolf’

Reading Questions on Joyce's "Araby"

Hello Everyone,

For your reference, here are the reading questions that I prepared on "Araby."

Cheers,
Ada

1)Who narrates this story? In what ways does “Araby” establish the voice of its narrator?


2)In what ways does this text make reference to issues surrounding colonialism in Ireland? Does this text explicitly engage issues of colonialism?


3)What mood or feeling best describes this story? In addressing this question, you might consider the main narrative events of “Araby” and the key motivating forces of its narrator.


4)What happens at the end of “Araby”? Look, in particular, at the text’s last sentence. Why does the narrator conclude his story in this way?

Irish Postcolonialism and James Joyce's Araby--Bradley and Annalisa

We are presenting this week on Irish Postcolonialism. Brenda Murray defines Post-colonialism as "Post-colonialism – essentially a critique of colonialism, is characterised by a

process of disengagement from the colonial epoch and has taken many forms" in her essay Ireland – a test case of Post-colonialism / Post colonialism.

Here's a timeline that outlines some key events in Ireland's history including its struggle for independence.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/country_profiles/1038669.stm

Araby, published in Joyce's collection, Dubliners (1914) was originally written in 1905, during the height of Irish nationalism. Sinn Féin, a left-wing Irish Nationalist group was founded in 1905, and most of the members partook in the Easter Rising of 1916.

Here is a summary of Araby, along with character descriptions, and plot themes:

http://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides5/Araby.html

The website states: "Joyce presents a bleak city struggling against oppressive forces."

In Joyce's description of the city, hints of eager nationalism are elicited, in passages such as:

“We walked through the flaring streets, jostled by drunken men and bargaining women, amid the curses of labourers, the shrill litanies of shop boys who stood on guard by the barrels of pigs’ cheeks, the nasal chanting of street singers who sang a come-all-you about O’Donovan Rossa or a ballad about the troubles in our native land” (Joyce, 1225).

O' Donovan Rossa is a reference to Jeremiah Donovan, and Irish Nationalist, who was sentenced to a lifetime of penal servitude but was granted amnesty and departed for America (Broadview).

Although short, the protagonist's arrival to a vacant Araby is even further disillusioned by his encounter with an English attendant.

"I remarked their English accents and listened vaguely to their conversation...Observing me, the young lady came over and asked me did I wish to buy anything. The tone of her voice was not encouraging: she seemed to have spoken to me out of a sense of duty" (Joyce, 1227).

This brief but acerbic encounter marks the struggle between the Irish and the English, and serves as a microcosm for the hostility between Irish nationalists and the British government.

References:

Joyce, James. The Broadview Anthology of British Literature Concise Edition Vol. B. Ed. Don LePan.

Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2008.

Irish Independence -- Joel, Jessica and Dorian

James Joyce and Araby

To start you off because James Joyce wrote in a stream of consciousness writing i will give you the term at the back of the book:

Stream of Consciousness: narrative techniques that attempts to convey in prose fiction a sense of the progression of the full range of thoughts and sensations occurring within a characters mind. Twentieth-century pioneers in the use of the stream of consciousness writing include Dorothy Richardson, Virgina Woolf and James Joyce.

- James Joyce is a well known Irish Novelist who redefined realism
- James Joyce grew up in a middle class family only later to fall to poverty due to having an alcoholic father
- His mother played a large role in his life by showing him the pleasures of art and Catholicism
- Later while at school James became very cynical of the church and believed Religion among other things to be a distraction for the budding artist
- He is best known for Ulysses a modern day retelling of The Odyssey
-Each chapter is an ironic rewriting of a chapter from Homer's Odyssey
-It is said that his book Ulysses can sum up the entire Modernist movement in writing

Wikipedia is a great place to get an over view of his life if you're interested in looking in more detail at his life and his works

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_joyce

Araby

- Araby is a Charity bazaar held in Dublin in 1894
- It is another of his works that deals with the Stream of Consciousness writing style that James Joyce Develops and perfects
-The story discusses themes of coming of age and the loss of innocence
-In Joyce's life it said that he became cynical of the church one of the first things in this story that happens is a priest dies
- not only does this priest die but in his room not only are there good and religious books there are also books about criminals among other things
- The story is told by a narrator of which we know nothing really about not even a name
- We know the narrator is a boy who is still attending school so he must be fairly young
- There is a lot of imagery in the story, and is told through the boy's observations
- In the short story there is reference to a number of literary works